Sunday, December 17, 2006

Wii hits two million mark

Sales of Nintendo´s Wii console have surpassed the two million mark, according to AMN´s Videogame Charts. Here are their current figures:

Xbox3600,27m Japan4,41m Americas1,94m Others6,62m in total

Wii0,60m Japan0,99m Americas0,49m Others2,08m in total

PlayStation30,31m Japan0,48m Americas0,00m Others0,79m in total

The other site playing the numbers game, NexGenWars, paints quite a different picture, particularly for the Xbox360:

Xbox3608,60m in total

Wii1,77m in total

PlayStation30,46m in total

Even with the latter figures, Nintendo is not far away from having sold two million consoles. If they can sustain this pace, Nintendo has a real chance of becoming market leader by the summer. But, of course, it is too early to tell until all three consoles are readily available.Sources: Videogame Charts, NexGenWars

9 comments:

Falafel lets get into some speculatory stories again, that is when you are at your peak...

Anyway it was always going to happen in March we'll see at least 6 Million sold, 2-3 PS3's sold and around 12 million 360's. Beyond there it's game on.

Next year will be very important to Nintendo and very busy. We'll find out about 2nd Generation Wii Games, Donkey Kong, Miyamoto's new IP, Animal Crossing and Mario Kart perhaps (among many more of course). Price Drops, new peripherals, New Channels, New DS games and most important to Nintendo's future, the Design Brief and process will start for the n6 or nintendo's next home console.

You are quite right. Just to be able to draw the comparison, I think it´s fair to say that the Wii had a better start than the Gamecube (though the Cube had a pretty good launch already). Here is what Gamecubicle wrote back then:

"During the first week of GameCube's availability in North America, over 500,000 systems were sold to consumers."

Now, Wii sold around 50% more in that first week, as far as I know. Still, too early to tell. But Wii seems to have outsold Gamecube in the US.

Quite right, we need a constant stream of excellent games. And Nintendo has made sure that there will be first party AAA titles every two month or so in 2007: Super Mario Galaxy, Wario Ware, ExciteTruck (not launched yet in Europe), Metroid.

The secret is to keep that momentum going in the second half of 2007 and to supplement it with as great a third party offering.

Also, I believe that a good online platform is vital. I am closely following the rumours about individual friend codes. That, I believe, could be a serious drawback as far as core gamers are concerned.

So I think we need not worry about a constant stream of games for the moment (not as far as first party is concerned, anyway). It is the online platform and the games situation that will present itself in a year´s time that may prove crucial.

Way back during the last-generation, I've been seeing alot of naysayers claiming that Nintendo is going end up like Sega because of slow GameCube sales. But since the Nintendo Wii is outselling the PlayStation 3, which almost unheard of with mainstream gamers, those naysayers should be eating their words soon.